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Cooper’s team have moved down to eighth place following their narrow defeat, as they now prepare for the trip to second place Bradford City on Saturday.

The Forest Green manager was furious with how his team defended Vale’s two goals.

“We wasted half a game of football, we didn’t perform in the first-half,” Cooper admitted. “We turned the ball over in good areas of the pitch and invited pressure.

“We’ve done hours and hours and hours of defending crosses into the box, to mark men and not space, but we conceded from two crosses. It’s basic, basic defending. You don’t give yourself a chance if you don’t mark your man in the box.

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“When you watch it back, there is a man unmarked in the six-yard box, so you would think we do no work on it – but we work tirelessly every day to try and mark men in the box.

“We were a goal down, then we got back into it. It was a great ball from Jojo (Joe Wollacott) and a great finish from Millsy (Joseph Mills), I then fancied us to kick on and start to play. We didn’t, though, we got worse.

“We had nobody really showing that desire to get into the box or take that shot from the edge of the box and we didn’t have that bit of quality to get us back into it.”

Cooper tweaked with the formation at half-time, like he did in Saturday’s win over Grimsby Town, but this time it didn’t have the desired effect.

Dom Bernard was brought off in place of Taylor Allen, with Rovers switching to four at the back, after starting with their orthodox three at the back system.

“It doesn’t matter what system you play; if you keep giving the ball away, you will get beat,” Cooper said.

“The way we play, if you turn the ball over in key areas, we’re going to get hurt. There was a lot of cheap turnovers tonight from our forward players, our more aggressive players, turned the ball over and gave us real issues.

“Number one, we couldn’t build anything and number two, it left us wide open. So that has to be better.”